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Dirk is a stage play adapted from the novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.
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Dirk is a stage play adapted from the novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.
The original adaptation was by James Goss and Arvind Ethan David while still at school [1] in 1991. In this form it was less than an hour long and "amusing but utterly incomprehensible".
The same team expanded the script and, with the assistance of producer Matt Wreford, staged a student production from 30 May to 3 June 1995 at the Old Fire Station Theatre in Oxford.
The production made use of computer animation to display some of the difficult scenes and concepts and was generally regarded as a success. SFX magazine said "As fine a piece of science fiction theatre as you are likely to find anywhere."
Douglas Adams attended the last night and was delighted with the production. [1]
It was revived again in 1997 but this time at the Oxford Playhouse, running from 5 November–8 November. Again Douglas Adams was in the audience and this was said to have got him thinking about a movie of Dirk Gently.
There was a further staging at Imperial College London on 8–11 December 1999.
After Adams's death in 2001, a smaller scale production was staged as a tribute at the Unicorn Theatre, Abingdon by the Old Gaol Theatre Company, running from the 5 December–8 December. The director was a friend of the Adams family and the last night was attended by Douglas's sister, Sue and James Thrift, Douglas's half-brother. This production used none of the computer effects of previous ones and relied heavily on the audience's familiarity with the story. A sofa, which forms a significant plot item in the book, was wedged in the staircase into the theatre so patrons had to climb over it to get to their seats.
Also in 2001, Dirk went international, with a production by the Vagabond Theatre company running in Perth, Western Australia from 14 June–30 June. The production was directed by Jo Marsh and starred Cavan Gallagher as Dirk Gently.
The first American production ran from 29 September to 12 December 2006 at the Road Theatre Company, North Hollywood, California.
In converting a very complex book into a play lasting 1–2 hours (depending on version) it was inevitable that some elements would have to be left out.
The biggest change is that the Electric Monk is left out completely. Apart from the difficulty of having a character on a horse in a stageplay, a large amount of the book concerning the monk is purely descriptive with little dialogue so he had to go. This in itself has knock-on effects for other characters and a further major change is that Michael Wenton-Weakes now becomes the murderer of Gordon Way.
The book appears to take place in an alternate universe whereas the play is in our universe and the paradoxes regarding Bach and Coleridge do not exist.
Another problem exists in the scene where Dirk and Richard are walking along the bank of the Grand Union Canal and Richard is supposed to dive in the canal when he hears the words "My old maiden Aunt who lived in Winnipeg". It would be rather difficult to have a canal on stage so this is replaced by Richard dancing the Bossa Nova and many people remember this as one of the funniest parts of the play.
Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, humorist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG). Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it was later adapted to other formats, including novels, stage shows, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 text adventure game, and 2005 feature film.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous detective novel by English writer Douglas Adams, published in 1987. It is described by the author on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic".
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously published and unpublished material by Douglas Adams. It consists largely of essays, interviews, and newspaper/magazine columns about technology and life experiences, but its major selling point is the inclusion of the incomplete novel on which Adams was working at the time of his death, The Salmon of Doubt. English editions of the book were published in the United States and UK on 11 May 2002, exactly one year after the author's death.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a 1988 humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams. It is the second book by Adams featuring private detective Dirk Gently, the first being Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Adams had intended to follow it with a third such novel, The Salmon of Doubt, but he died before completing it; an unfinished draft is included in a posthumously published collection of the same name.
Dirk Gently is a fictional character created by English writer Douglas Adams and featured in the books Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and The Salmon of Doubt. He is portrayed as a pudgy man who normally wears a heavy old light brown suit, red checked shirt with a green striped tie, long leather coat, red hat and thick metal-rimmed spectacles. "Dirk Gently" is not the character's real name. It is noted early on in the first book that it is a pseudonym for "Svlad Cjelli". Dirk himself states that the name has a "Scottish dagger feel" to it.
Professor Urban Chronotis is a fictional character created by Douglas Adams. He was originally created for the 1979 Doctor Who serial Shada, starring Tom Baker and Lalla Ward. However, the filming of the serial was never completed due to a strike. Adams then re-used the character and many of the themes from Shada in his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, first published in 1987. In both versions, Chronotis is a clandestine time-traveller, whose time machine is disguised as his college rooms.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy radio series primarily written by Douglas Adams. It was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and afterwards the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the US and CBC Radio in Canada. The series was the first radio comedy programme to be produced in stereo, and was innovative in its use of music and sound effects, winning a number of awards.
Robert Duncan is an English actor. He is best known for his television role as Gus Hedges, the jargon-speaking manager, from Drop the Dead Donkey. He also appeared in Casualty as Peter Hayes between 1995 and 1996 and as Lazarus in the 2000 film The Miracle Maker.
Michael Bywater is an English non-fiction writer and broadcaster. He has worked for many London newspapers and periodicals and contributed to the design of computer games.
James Goss is an English writer and producer, known both for his work in cult TV spin-off media, including tie-in novels and audio stories for Doctor Who and Torchwood, and for his fictional works beyond established universes.
Felicity Jane Montagu is an English actress. She is best known for playing Lynn Benfield, the long-suffering assistant of Alan Partridge.
Samuel Barnett is an English actor. He has performed on stage, film, television and radio and achieved recognition for his work on the stage and film versions of The History Boys by Alan Bennett. His television performances include roles in the BBC comedy Twenty Twelve and in the Showtime drama Penny Dreadful. He played the lead role of Dirk Gently in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, the 2016 BBC America adaptation of the book series by Douglas Adams.
Hyperland is a 50-minute-long documentary film about hypertext and surrounding technologies. It was written by Douglas Adams and produced and directed by Max Whitby for BBC Two in 1990. It stars Douglas Adams as a computer user and Tom Baker, with whom Adams had already worked on Doctor Who, as a personification of a software agent.
A dirk is a type of dagger.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is an Above the Title Productions radio adaptation, dramatised by Dirk Maggs and John Langdon of Douglas Adams's The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Starring Harry Enfield, Peter Davison, John Fortune and Stephen Moore, it started broadcasting on 2 October 2008 on BBC Radio 4.
Arvind Ethan David, is a Malaysian-born, British film producer, founder of Slingshot Productions, and Principal of Prodigal Entertainment. He is best known for producing a stage musical of Jagged Little Pill, based on the album by Alanis Morissette, and the American adaptation of Douglas Adams' science fiction detective comedy novel series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on BBC America, which premiered in October 2016. Other feature films he has produced include Tormented starring Alex Pettyfer and French Film starring Hugh Bonneville and Manchester United football legend Eric Cantona - with the latter winning Best Actor for Bonneville and Best Screenplay for Aschlin Ditta at the 2008 Monte Carlo Film Festival.
Dirk Gently is a British comic science fiction detective television series based on characters from the novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. The series was created by Howard Overman and stars Stephen Mangan as holistic detective Dirk Gently and Darren Boyd as his sidekick Richard MacDuff. Recurring actors include Helen Baxendale as MacDuff's girlfriend Susan Harmison, Jason Watkins as Dirk's nemesis DI Gilks and Lisa Jackson as Dirk's receptionist Janice Pearce. Unlike most detective series Dirk Gently features broadly comic touches and even some science fiction themes such as time travel and artificial intelligence.
The pilot episode of Dirk Gently is the first broadcast episode of the BBC Four television series inspired by Douglas Adams's novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. First broadcast on 16 December 2010 and repeated throughout the Christmas period, it was written by Howard Overman and stars Stephen Mangan as holistic detective Dirk Gently and Darren Boyd as his sidekick Richard Macduff. Recurring actors include Helen Baxendale as Susan Harmison, Jason Watkins as DI Gilks and Lisa Jackson as Janice Pearce.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a BBC America comic science fiction detective television series created and primarily written by Max Landis. The two seasons are inspired by the novel series of the same name by Douglas Adams. The series is co-produced and distributed by BBC America and Netflix, along with AMC Studios, Ideate Media and IDW Entertainment. Filming primarily took place in Vancouver, British Columbia.